Sinner, Carsten (2006): "When Musicians Play Swallows in the Cemetery: On the Translation

of Mendez' EI suefzo de Santa Maria de las Piedras". In: Bandau, Anj a / Marc Priewe (Hrsg.):

Mobile Crossings: Representations ojChicana/o Cultures. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag

Trier, 139-152.

When Musicians Play Swallows in the Cemetery: On the Translation of Miguel Mendez's El sueiio de Santa Maria

de las Piedras

Carsten Sinner

Introduction

The process of translation is hindered by passages aimed to mark orality as well as the signs of intercultural conflicts and surrealist overtones. The maintenance of formal aspects on the linguistic level as well as the maintenance of connotations and metalin­guistic statements grounded on particular cultural experiences are often seen as diffi­cult in the context of cultural and linguistic contact in texts. In how far a constancy of effects in the process of translation is reached not only depends on the involved lan­guages, but also on the means chosen to secure this constancy of effects. These means may include elements determined by certain cultural criteria, particularly those ele­

ments which reflect cultural conflicts or continuities (cf. Sinner). Our attitudes, posi­tions and stereotypes lead to expectations that may provoke misinterpretations of the messages contained in a text (Wendt 194). According to Hans Vermeer, those in­stances which reflect conflicts of cultures should be visible, as much as possible, in the translation, but they should never obstruct the legibility of a text, because by doing so, they interfere with the reader's experience who, when reading a novel, normally ex­pects a literary text with literary quality. The sense of a text can change considerably if the translator tries to maintain the surface structure; if he tries to maintain the sense, he might be obliged to change the underlying structure of the text (Vermeer 544). In this essay, I want to utilise Vermeer's approach and analyse the original Spanish version of Miguel Mendez's novel El sueno de Santa Maria de las Piedras (1986) and the Eng­lish translation. In particular, I want to show that some of the elements of El sueno de Santa Maria de las Piedras, which seem to be indispensable for the creation of its in­tercultural ambience, are a real challenge for any translation, both when the target text tries to maintain linguistic devices or when it tries to recreate them in the target lan­guage. The recreation in the target language is made more difficult by the fact that lan­guage and culture are highly interdependent. The strong intertwinement of language and culture is highlighted by Susan Bassnett-McGuire, who defines language as

the heart within the body of culture, and it is the interaction between the two that results in the continuation of life-energy. In the same way that the surgeon, operating on the heart, cannot neglect the body that surrounds it, so the translator treats the text in isola­tion from the culture at his peril. (14)

140 CARSTEN SINNER

I will argue in this essay that by "treat[ing] the text in isolation" the translator damages the text's meaning and its effect.

Miguel Mendez, born in 1930 in Bisbee, Arizona, was brought up in Sonora, Mexico and immigrated back to Tucson, Arizona when he was fourteen. Mendez, who had only attended school for six years, published his first stories while he was still making a living as an unskilled worker at construction sites. In 1970 he became a teacher at Pima Community College in Tucson, and since 1974 he has worked as a teacher in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Arizona. Mendez is the first person to hold a chair at a U.S. university without ever having received a univer­sity (or even a high school) degree. In 1997 he was nominated for the Nobel Prize for literature. Mendez is one of the most outstanding personalities of Chicano literature and one of the few Chicano authors who publish exclusively in Spanish (cf. Rodriguez del Pino; Debate 26). I

In his work, Mendez deals with the political, socio-economic and linguistic aspects of everyday life in the U.S.-Mexico borderland. He has published short stories, children's stories and poems, but he has found the most success with his novels. In his earlier stories, he describes the hard living conditions of Mexican immigrants in the USA and, as a consequence, was seen as representative of the Chicano protest movement in the 1960s. He is nowadays considered a leading writer of el movimiento and an out­standing representative of the first wave of the so-called boom chicano (together with Tomas Rivera, Rolando Hinojosa Smith, Estela Portillo Trambley and Rudolfo Anaya). Likewise, he is said to be the most important representative of the literatura de la/rontera or literatura/ronteriza, that is, Chicano literature written in Spanish (cf. Davila). During his literary career, Mendez never lost his critical view of society. Ac­cording to Juan Bruce-Novoa, he is "the voice of silence crying for justice in the de­sert" (27). The desert, a "frontier of cactuses, stones, sand, and fire between Mexico to the south and the United States on the northern side" (Mendez 1989:3), was always omnipresent in Mendez's writing, and the borderland is, for him, a cultural landscape, cut by the border and the soldiers patrolling it (cf. Pifia Ortiz).

El sueiw de Santa Maria de las Piedras is the story of a small, impoverished town in the Sonora Desert of rural Mexico: "sintesis de cualquier pueblo de la frontera" (Villar Raso 10). It is seen through the eyes of several old men who gather every day to remi­nisce in the town square, telling tales about the colourful characters and unbelievable events that make up the history of Santa Maria de las Piedras,

such as the discovery of gold, the arrival of the town's first brothel, and the comical Noragua family, which specializes in eggs and madness. Juxtaposed with the reminis­cences is the story of the fantastic journey taken by one member of the Noragua family who sets out to seek his fortune in the United States and ends up on a chimerical and disillusioning encounter with his own destiny (Mendez 1989: backcover).

At the I Congreso de Lengua y Literatura Chicanas at the University of Granada in 1998, Mendez said "que nunca escribini en ingles, que &1 se debe a sus raices, y que de elias debe salir la identidad propia de la literatura chicana" (Debate 26).

WHEN MUSICIANS PLA Y SWALLOWS 141

As a writer, Mendez has often been compared with John Steinbeck because of his lyri­cal style, and with Garcia Marquez for his maze-like narrative structure. Still, it is use­ful to keep in mind that comparisons of this kind also contribute to make Mendez's books more likely to sell, and it is sometimes hard to distinguish literary criticism and publicity. Mendez's Spanish editors have used blurbs from famous authors such as Camilo Jose Cela and articles in well-known newspapers to highlight his technical and creative potential, his "sefiorio de la lengua" (Gonzalez Gomez) and his "extraordinary talent" (Sainz). When Mendez's novels were first published in Spain, he was compared with a series of South American writers well-known in Spain such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Isabel Allende, and his Spanish to that of Cela or Carpentier, Cabrera Infante y Juan Rulfo. Miguel Gonzalez Gomez - a famous Spanish literary critic - sta­ted during the promotion of El sueno de Santa Maria de las Piedras that Mendez "tras­ciende la frontera norte de Mexico y se situa holgadamente en una dimension latinoa­mericana." There is no doubt this is an attempt to position Mendez next to successful South American writers in order to promote his book. However, his language and style, together with the strong commitment of his narrative to Chicano culture, has made his work an object of study for linguists and literary critics all over the world, leading to more than twenty Ph.D. theses, many books and scholarly articles on his work.2

The translation of Mendez's El sueiio de Santa Maria de las Piedras

Mendez's texts are full of linguistic particularities that are not always easily classified as Mexican Spanish, Chicano Spanish, or the author's individual style. These particu­larities, while challenging, do not make the original text incomprehensible. To the translator, though, the particularities are challenging since the translator has to solve the problem of translating regionalisms and individual creations. Even speakers of European Spanish may have difficulties in understanding some of these elements (as can be seen from the fact that the Spanish editors of El sueno added a glossary of sev­eral pages).3 Memories are a particularly important narrative technique in El sueno and they reinforce its orality (cf. Flores). Chicanisms4 are often found in passages marked by orality (such as dialogues and inner speech), making EI sueno de Santa Maria de las Piedras especially difficult to translate. A good example of the high level of orality is the humorous use of certain word formations, such as the combination of truncation and composition, as in the word desmejodido in the following extract:

2 Cf., for example, Bruce-Novoa; Gaardner; Johnson (1978, 1982); Bornstein de Somoza; Gutierrez Revuelta; Promis; Alarcon; Walter (1990, 1993); Pina Ortiz; Keller and Men­dez; Flores; Watts.

3 The director of the J Congreso en Espana de Lengua y litera/lira Chicanas at the Uni­versity of Granada, Manuel Villar Raso, said that Chicano literature, "que tiene como base la experiencia de una comunidad de origen hispano tan numerosa, no puede sernos ajena en Espana" (Debate 26).

4 Regionalism, such as these chicanisms, are not necessary limited to one single region of the Spanish-speaking world; some of them occur in other varieties, sometimes with other meanings, connotations, or are used in another register.

142 CARSTEN SINNER

(I a) Se ve usted medio serio don Te6filo. Es que me siento desmejodido, mis riiiones gozan de vacaciones, mejor sera que no se rajen porque se amuelan junto corunigo. (Mendez 1997: 19)

Desmejodido is the result of lexical amalgamation. The new word evokes other famil­iar words and therefore allows the reader to interpret it by analogy. Desmejodido re­sults from the amalgamation of the truncated adjective desmejorado, from the verb desmejorar 'to deteriorate' or 'to go downhill' and the truncated (a) or complete (b) ad­jective jodido, from the verb joder, figurative for 'to fuck', 'to destroy':

(a) desmejo[radoj + [jojdido > desmejodido or

(b) desme[jorado j + jodido > desmejodido.

Desmejodido is not found in any Spanish language dictionary and was classified by native speakers consulted for this purpose as an incorrect form, a non-existing form, but also as easily understandable and funny.5 The translation of such word formations can be difficult, especially when the target language does not belong to the same lan­guage family (cf. Sinner). While other Romance languages often make it easy to re­construct Spanish word formation models, the morphosyntactic possibilities in English or German do not normally allow the imitation of its formation process. The U.S.­American version gives the meaning, but does not recreate the humorous effect of desmejodido:

(1 b) You look a little serious, Don Te6filo. Oh, I feel a little messed up. My kidneys are on vacation, and I hope they don't give out because they're mad at me. (Me­ndez 1989:6)

These kinds of incompatible morphosyntactic devices, or this lack of analogy on the morphosyntactic level, are known to be a very specific problem of translations (cf. Meyer-Clason 568; Sinner). The translation of elements that carry particular sociolec­tal, dialectal, or regional marks is a classic problem in translating; the difficulty is not the translation of meanings, that is, on the denotative level, but the way it is encoded (cf. Catford 83-92). Certain expressions can only be interpreted as locally or regionally restricted, or even as individual creations, such as lener barbas 'to be very old' or 'to be old fashioned'. The translation of these expressions can be solved by the substitution of the regional expression by a standard one. Nonetheless, this can cause problems when the metaphorical phrase is used again later in the text, for example, to give the text coherence, or to reinforce argumentative structures. As Rei13 (63) points out, the rec­reation of puns in prose is necessary, especially when they appear several times in the same text. In the following example, the U.S.-American translator substitutes the original metaphorical expression, but he has to give up part of the image given in the original:

5 In a message sent to an internet discussion group in 1998, it is pointed out that, many years ago, one could hear desmejodido in colloquial speech in one of the Spanish cities where the best Spanish is said to be spoken: "se usaba en Valladolid hace una pila de aiios" (Garcia-Barrio). Even though this word formation process is particularly pro­ductive in oral language and especially in publicity, I consider it an individual creation not generalised in the Spanish language.

WHEN MUSICIANS PLAY SWALLOWS

(2a) Barbas tienes y con elias te entretienes (Mendez 1997: 19)

[A beard (beards) you have and you entertain yourself with it]

(2b) You old goat, you still keep going (Mendez 1989:5)

143

The resumption of the metaphorical expression in the original text is a continuation of the image and underlines the humorous treatment (and therefore the importance of humour as characteristic for the social manners of the old men); in the translation, the resumption does not contribute to this effect:

(3a) Barbas tienen tu y tu tio Emeterio. (Mendez 1997: 19)

(3b) You old goat (Mendez 1989:6).

By using regionalisms in his writings, Mendez intersperses his stories with so-called tratti bandieri, elements that allow the readers to identify his texts as Chicano, not only because of the settings and the theme chosen, but also because of certain linguis­tic devices, particularly on the lexical level. By doing so, the author takes for granted that typical phenomena of Chicano Spanish, U.S.-American Spanish and Northern Mexican Spanish will be understood by the reader. He does not provide explanations in the text itself. The author is indeed conscious of the difficulty his language might cause some readers, and does not, in fact, hesitate to choose it as a central theme in one chapter:

(4a) Escribir ficcion es como platicar de lejos sin verle la cara a la gente. Pos estamos jodidos y agujereados de en medio, es como si un pelon se hallara un rizador. Es cierto, Teofilo, no hay como platicar al chilazo. Y eso de chilazo que, Paparru­chas. Pos quiere decir que a chile pelon y a calzon quitado. Miren, sefiores, eso qui ere decir «al pan pan y al vino vino» con el debido respeto para el lector. Pues a mi el lector me la pela si se encela, me 10 moja si se enoja, si se encisca me 10 arrisca, si me va me 10 da y si se escama ya sabras. (Mendez 1997: 160)

The English version translates the innovative or regionally marked sequences by re­placing the "normal" (Standard) Spanish expression with a "normal" (Standard) Eng­lish expression:

(4b) Writing fiction is like talking from afar without seeing the faces of the people. You never seem to hit the mark. It's like buying curlers for someone who's bald. That's right, Teofilo. There's nothing like straight talk. And speaking of straight talk, Paparruchas? It just means let's get down to brass tacks. Look, fellows, that means "let's call a spade a spade," with all due respect to the reader. Well, I don't give a fig for the reader. (Mendez 1989: 129)

Mendez's intentions or motives to use certain expressions should be taken into consid­eration in the translation process, especially when determining an adequate translation method. In the following example, Mendez uses a pun based on the different meanings of golondrina 'swallow':

(Sa) Tu y tus pinches remedios, Nacho, de grillo son las patas que te cargan. Entonces te receto las golondrinas. De cocimientos estoy hasta la gorra. Yo digo las golon­drinas que toean en el cementerio. (Mendez 1997: 19)

144 CARSTEN SINNER

Even without knowing that a golondrina is a type of music usually played during buri­als, the verb tocar 'to play (an instrument, music)' enables one to decipher its meaning. Therefore, a 1: 1 translation is possible. Here the U.S.-American translator prefers to add the agent of the action that is left out in the Spanish version:6

(5b) You and your damn remedies, Nacho, your feet belong to a grasshopper. In that case I'll prescribe swallows for you. I'm fed up with boiled this and that. I'm re­ferring to the swallows the musicians play in the cemetery. (Mendez 1997: 19)

Even so, the effect of the translation is not the same as in the original, because the joke is based on a pun and it does not work the same way because one of the two constitu­ents of the pun is understood only after meditating on the whole conversation. The use of lexical elements like golondrinas which are bound to a certain culture or exclu­sively used in one linguistic community7 can be due to exoticism, the representation of the spoken language, local colour, the characterisation of people or the lack of linguis­tic capability (e.g., the lack of knowledge of the standard expression). 8 Furthermore, these uses can have different effects on the constitution of the text. For example, it can be necessary (or the author himself might find it adequate) to highlight those instances of regional or local culture with italics or quotation marks, and to add glossaries and word explanations for certain readers. Either the translator or the editor decides whether to maintain these aspects in the target text, but this can be a difficult undertak­ing. Claire Joysmith describes the difficulties she had with a professional reader, "highly competent and well-known in Mexico," who read translations for her anthol­ogy of Chicana poetry that was to be published in Mexico:

'lncorrections' in Spanish, misspellings, archaic and rural oral expressions in the original texts were questioned as was the presence of interlingualism and how it was to be 'marked' - or erased - in the text. Cultural and linguistic markers were re-translated and horror was expressed in red ink at my proposal as editor of the volume to actually re­produce and thereby perpetrale these 'incorrections' in the translations themselves as markers of chicanidad that otherwise risked 'erasure'. (I I )

Usually, the local or regional elements cannot be translated into the standard forms without losing certain elements the author uses on purpose, and therefore losing the chicanidad of the original. On the other hand, these instances normally have to be translated using the standard forms; the translation of dialect forms through the use of dialect forms in the target language is highly controversial (cf. Koller passim; Takaha­shi). Particularly in the case of lacking equivalent elements on the lexical level, the translator has to face the "inevitability of losses" (Barchudarov 126) of connotations. Therefore, in the given example, it might be preferable to substitute the pun, in Span-

6 Cf. Ulrich on the impersonal constructions in Spanish and her interpretation of construc­tions like las golondrinas que locan given in (4a).

7 Cf. Vernay (29-31), Wotjak (59) and Nord (105-106) about the relevance of distinguish­ing between linguistic communities, communication communities and cultural commu­nities for the translation.

8 Cf. the use of typical Mozambican vocabulary in Portuguese texts written by Mozambi­can authors (Sinner), or the use of Angolan Portuguese by Angolan authors to illustrate oral speech and to make dialogues more authentic (Hundt/Perl 51; Berschin 376).

WHEN MUSICIANS PLA Y SWALLOWS 145

ish, for a similar one in the target language. The substitution of a pun with a different pun is a recognised means of translation, and it is also seen as justifiable to use a 'compensatory' pun somewhere else in the text when a translation with similar effects is not possible in the same sentence or passage of the target text. In German, there are different possible translations, such as translating golondrinas as Schwalben 'swal­lows', changing the pun from the double sense swallow (bird) - swallow (music) to Schwalbe (bird) - Schwalbe (as a metaphor for 'musician in black clothes'), or the translation of golondrinas as Fliegen 'flies' - Fliegen (der Musiker) 'bow ties' (of the musicians). The second possibility seems preferable because Fliege in the sense of 'bow tie' is immediately recognised by the reader as part of his own culture while the first solution has a certain air of artificial or forced translation and needs to be ex­plained in the immediate context:

(5c) Ou und deine verdammten Heilmittel, Nacho, Grillenbeine hast du vielleicht. Oann verschreib ich dir eben Schwalben. Ich hab die Schnauze voll von deinem gekochten Kram. Ich meine doch nur die befrackten Schwalben, die bei den Be­erdigungen spielen.

(5d) Ou und deine verdammten Heilmittel, Nacho, Grillenbeine hast du vielleicht. Oann verschreib ich dir eben Fliegen. Ich hab die Schnauze voll von deinem ge­kochten Kram. Ich meine doch nur die Fliegen von den Musikem, die dir bei dei­ner Beerdigung ein Abschiedslied spielen.

Explications or expansions such as befrackt 'in tails' or 'tail-coated' that are introduced to achieve equivalence between the original text and the translated text can normally only compensate the denotative part of the loss, while the connotative loss cannot be compensated at all (cf. Gataullin 63).

When translating Chicano literature written in Spanish, there are always elements that can only be interpreted in the context of extralinguistic reality. The translator has to recreate the result of the amalgamation of two (or even three) cultures (e.g., cultural contact and crossing, intercultural reality), in the language of yet another culture. Ad­ditionally, the translator has to find the linguistic means in the target language to meet Mendez's use of markers of chicanidad in the original text. The translator is required to decipher cultural symbols of identity and rearrange them to make them accessible to the readers in the target culture. In comparison with languages like German, the Eng­

lish translation profits from the fact that there is also a culture related to the desert, which can be expressed through the English language. This is due to the bilingualism of many Chicano communities, and also to the fact that Anglo-American English has developed a similar means of expression needed to describe the realities and perspec­tives voiced in the desert and in the borderland. As a matter of fact, most Chicano writers express themselves in English in their writings. Consequently, the translation from Chicano Spanish into American English can sometimes be easier (or less prob­lematic) than the translation into German. There is no doubt about the remarkable cul­tural difference between German and European Spanish (cf. Nord 156-157, Vermeer 542). The distance between German and Chicano Spanish and their specific cultures is even greater, and therefore the translation process between these two cultures and lan­guages is necessarily much more difficult. As I have shown in an analysis of Spanish,

146 CARSTEN SINNER

Catalan and German translations from Mozambican Portuguese, the translation from a language that functions as a binding link between two or more cultures - like Mozam­bican Portuguese or Chicano Spanish - necessarily provokes inevitable difficulties in the translation, when linguistic devices or even entire texts embody, in a particular way, cultural conflicts or the interculturality of the linguistic reality of the source lan­guage.

The connotations mentioned above, as well as any kind of underlying associations, are a fundamental difficulty of translation from Chicano Spanish. This is the case espe­cially of those associations provoked by certain realities (both in Spanish and Ameri­can English) often lost in translation, at least in translation into German, as, for exam­ple, the specific terms bound to the Sonora Desert, such as the variety of names for certain hills, heights, hillocks or knolls, or the names of typical desert plants and ani­mals known to Spanish and English speakers alike (and therefore no problem for an English translation), such as ocotillo, palo fierro, nopalera, choya, sahuaro (cf. Me­ndez 1997:35, 1989:58). Further examples are names used for the inhabitants of the Sonora Desert, and in the borderland in general, such as denominations for Anglo­Americans (gabas, gabachos, gringos, giiero), terms for people with Spanish ancestors (like gachupin) and denominations of people with Indian and Spanish origins (for in­stance 6patas) (cf. Mendez 1997:241). Some of these elements are even used as roots for new words, as in Gringuia (from gringo for Anglo-American) as a synonym of Estados Unidos de America (United States of America):

(6a) Quien va a creer que exista un hombre tan bruto como ese indio Timoteo, que es que busca a Dios en Gringuia. (Mendez 1997: 161)

(6b) Nobody'd believe anybody could be as stupid as that Indian Timoteo, looking for God in Gringoland. (Mendez 1989: 129)

Other realities are used in metaphorical utterances. These metaphorical uses do not impede a translation on the denotative level, but they do not allow for the achievement

of comparable effects on the connotative or pragmatic level, as can be seen in the fol­lowing extracts of the original and its English translation:

(7a) La Lucia era un sol en version feminina, esplendorosa, con mas fuego que una es­tufa de lena de palofierro. (Mendez 1997: 127)

(7b) Lucia was the sun in a feminine version - splendid, with more fire than a stove burning ironwood. (Mendez 1989:99-100)

Apart from the loss of the effect of the feminine version of the sun in German, due to the fact that the grammatical gender of Sonne 'sun' is feminine (and not masculine as in Spanish or undefined as in English), a German translation of palofierro is possible, whether by giving an approximate translation, or by using the absolute equivalent, but the transfer of the connotations bound to this word will not be saved.

The use of code switching from Spanish to English is almost impossible to translate, especially the use of code switching phenomena in Chicano Spanish and the traces of linguistic interferences, such as anglicisms that are typical for spoken Chicano Span­ish, like rentar (Mendez 1997:38) « to rent, instead of Spanish pres tar, alquilar) or el concreto (Mendez 1997: 199) « concrete, instead of Spanish hormig6n). We already

WHEN MUSICIANS PLA Y SWALLOWS 147

mentioned the difficulty of reproducing these markers of chicanidad in the translation where they are often seen as incorrect (Joysmith 11).

Another important challenge for translation that should be mentioned is the surrealist overtone that characterises El sueiio. The difficulties that have to be taken into consid­eration are: the magic elements closely related to the history, the way of life and the feelings of the people of the desert; the elements closely bound to their myths and hopes, or their fears and beliefs; and, finally, the strong religious background of Mexi­can-American or Chicano communities.

A particular problem in translation is the constant references to Indian or Mexican an­cestors of the Chicano population, specifically the mythical places of origin of the In­dians or their ancestors. Many of the surrealist passages of EI sueiio are based on ref­erences to old myths, or use old stories about origins, spirits, god or the peoples' roots. The many references to Aztlan depict it as an island.9 In Chicano folklore it is often appropriated as the name for the part of Mexico that was annexed by the United States after the Mexican-American War ( 1846-1848). In Ef sueiio, in a passage where Timoteo, the mad son of the Noraffua family, is searching for a better life and for God, one finds the following sentence: 1

(8a) Pararon a distancia frente a una ciudad sumergida a la que los antiguos llamaron Aztlantida. (Mendez 1997:87)

Mendez uses the name of the mythical place of origin of the Aztecs (and therefore of Chicanos) and amalgamates this symbol of Chicano identity with the myth of the sub­merged island of Atlantis (in Spanish, fa AtlOntida), a myth strongly bound to occiden­tal culture and tradition. The English translation does not preserve the reference to Az­tlan (which would hardly be understood by readers not familiar with the topic), and reduces the reference to the island of Atlantis. Therefore, it lacks the mythical power and the link to the Aztec past, as given in the original passage:

(8b) They came to stop some distance before a submerged city that the ancients called Atlantis. (Mendez 1989:64)

Very often, the magic-realistic elements are mixed with mirage-like passages. This is the case in Timoteo's visions or feelings that sometimes resemble dreams, and also in some of the fantastic scenes described by the old men who only occasionally do not "buzz with real or invented stories" (Mendez 1989:143). The reader does not always learn whether he is exposed to the growing madness of the main character. the exag-

9 According to their origin myths, the Aztecs emerged from the bowels of the earth and settled in Aztlan. From Aztlan they migrated southwards in search of a sign - an eagle

atop a cactus growing from a stone - that would indicate that they should settle again. The exact location of Aztlan is unknown; some believe it must have been located on the coast of northwestern Mexico, others think San Felipe Aztlan, Nayarit could be the ex­

act place.

10 Timoteo is searching for Huachusey. As he does not understand the English question

"What'd you say?," when asking for the owner or the creator of certain things and build­

ings he sees on his way through the USA, he thinks it is the name of an omnipotent per­son, or perhaps God himself.

148 CARSTEN SINNER

gerated narrations of the old desert people reviving their memories, or the fantastic perspective of the narrator himself.

The references to religion, especially Catholicism, are frequent throughout the text. Mendez comes from a strong Catholic background; he grew up within a society marked by Catholicism, and he describes a world where people have strong beliefs in certain aspects of the Catholic religion (or of the Church itself). The best example of this attachment to a culture and language, one heavily influenced by the Catholic relig­ion, is the title of the book (at the same time the fictitious place where the novel is set). This religion and religiosity are used to characterise the inhabitants of Santa Maria de las Piedras: their language is full of quotations from the Bible, allusions to biblical im­ages, metaphorical expressions, puns based on the Bible and simple fixed expressions that have lost their religious connotation and are used widely in the spoken language. Some examples are given in the sentences 9 to II:

(9a) Buenos dias, hija. Dios te guarde. ( Mendez 1997: 159)

(9b) Good morning daughter, God be with you. (Mendez 1989: 128)

(lOa) Yo, senor, me vine de Michoacan cuando estaba muchacha, mi marido, que ya goza del Senor, era de Sinaloa. (Mendez 1989: 134)

(lOb) I, sir, came from Michoacan when I was a girl. My husband, who is already with the lord, was from Sinaloa. (Mendez 1989: 1 06)

(l l a) Acuerdense que 10 que les voy a platicar es serio y muy cierto, por vida de Di­osito Santo. (Mendez 1997: 139)

( l l b) Just remember that what I'm going to tell you is serious and quite true, I swear by the body of Christ. (Mendez 1989: 11 0)

Although these expressions are more frequent in the passages that represent oral speech, many of them can also be found in the narrative and descriptive passages, and there are continuous allusions to religious practices bound to the Catholic Church:

(l 2a) No tendrian que ponerse cruces de ceniza en la frente para saberse de tierra, si las mismas higrimas marc an sus caras, cuando lloran y se deslizan por su capa de polvo que siempre cubre sus rostros. (Mendez 1997: 153)

(l2b) They do not need to make the sign of the cross in ashes on their foreheads to know they are of the earth, for it is their own tears that stain their faces when they cry and roll down through the layer of dust that always covers their faces. ( Mendez 1989: 121)

The translation of these elements into German is quite difficult, but it is more often a

problem of frequency rather than of finding the adequate equivalent. In the original, the religious allusions allow the author to paint a more precise picture of Santa Maria and its inhabitants (giving local colour and allowing the reader a "cultural immer­sion"); in the German translation, these religious allusions will necessarily lead to con­notations not intended by the author. In German, the constant use of expressions from the Bible, prayers or religious songs, is seen as a sign of exaggerated religiousness be­cause the German language is not as influenced by the language of religion as Spanish is, where such elements belong to everyday speech to a much larger extent. For in-

WHEN MUSICIANS PLA Y SWALLOWS 149

stance, a whole chapter is dedicated to the attempt by a Protestant Father to convert the

Catholic people of Santa Maria. Some of the main figures (a bunch of old men) are talking about their home town and mention Father Trini Brown and his "halleluja men" (Mendez 1989:6). They laugh about Protestants (who cannot bear the heat of the desert), and the Father, who would end up dehydrated in the desert (Mendez 1997:7). The religious background, the differences in terms of religious denomination between Anglo-Americans, Chicanos and indios, are all realities the German reader does not necessarily know or understand well, and therefore, also, the conflicts raised by the encounter of these different denominations might sometimes be difficult to compre­hend. The humorous effect is necessarily motivated in a different way if the pious (or at least apparently pious) passages are translated into German, or simply omitted. If translated, many of the cynical comments of the old men can be easily misinterpreted as false piety or as a god-fearing attitude by the reader. If they are left out, the humor­ous effect is definitely less strong in German. As a matter of fact, the numerous pas­

sages with quotations from the Bible or allusions to biblical or religious characters or myths made editors shy away from the book's publication in German, because they considered the (apparently) strong religiosity as unmarketable in Germany. I I

Conclusion

Many of the particularities of Mendez's text can be translated, at least at the denotative level. However, because of the connotative and emotive levels, the text as a whole loses part of its inherent colour. It loses the intensity of its surrealist tone, its linguistic, cultural and ethnic roots, and especially its commitment to local and regional identi­ties. These inherent colours are either the result of the unusual interaction of the lin­guistic and thematic (or even spiritual) components, or the result of their correlation. The characteristic and unique interaction of linguistic and spiritual levels that provide the novel its particular chicanidad can hardly be recreated in a sufficient manner in German, especially if the translator tries to maintain the process of language inherent to the source culture. As Homi Bhabha points out, "[i]t is the difference in the process of language that is crucial to the production of meaning" (36). Obviously, it is not al­ways possible to maintain the visibility of those elements that reflect conflicts of cul­tures as required by Vermeer (544). There is no way we can understand (or make un­derstandable) cultures that are different from our own culture without understanding (or making understandable) cultural difference itself. While cultural diversity is an epistemological object and culture can be seen as an object of empirical knowledge, "cultural difference is the process of the enunciation of culture as 'knowledgeable',

11 The many surrealist scenes in the novel can also be seen as a logical consequence of the characters' religious upbringing. In this sense the prominent Catholic background gives the novel a surrealist air and thus makes it possible to read it in the context of magical realism. This is evinced by the storytellers, who are inspired by what they know from the Bible, and also by the mad Timoteo, whose visions resemble descriptions of the apocalypse. In addition, there is the appearance of the archangel Michael and the visions of horrible events such as nuclear wars.

150 CARSTEN SINNER

authoritative, adequate to the construction of systems of cultural identification" (Bhabha 34, original emphasis). The enunciation of cultural difference demands that we rethink our perspective on the identity of culture (Bhabha 35), but, as we express cultural identity, we need language, and language cannot be separated from culture. The target text will always be interpreted from within the target culture. There is no doubt that the strong relation between language and culture in fact is comparable to a "heart within the body of culture" as described by Bassnett-McGuire (14). To change the language of a given text that represents a determined culture therefore is like sur­gery, and the translator, like a surgeon, has to do all he can to make the heart grow in the new body. To stay within the technical language of surgery: the translator has to transplant the language into a new body of culture using all the surgical devices avail­able to him, paying all the attention he has to the fact that the body must not die as a result of the incompatibility of heart and body, of language and culture.

Works Cited

Alarcon, Justo S. 1989: "Lo esperpentico en Miguel Mendez." In: The Americas Review 17.1, 84-99.

Barchudarov, Leonid S. 1979: Sprache und Ubersetzung: Probleme der allgemeinen und speziellen Ubersetzungstheorie. M. Zwilling (trans.), Leipzig/Moskau: Enzyklopadie/ProgreB.

Bassnett-McGuire, Susan 1991: Translation Studies. London: Routledge.

Berschin, Helmut 1994: "Artikel 439. Portugiesisch: Diglossie und Polyglossie." In: GUnter Holtus, Michael Metzeltin, Christian Schmitt (eds.), Lexikon der Romani­stischen Linguistik, Band VI, 2; Galegisch, Portugiesisch. TUbingen: Niemeyer, 367-38 \.

Bhabha, Homi K. 1994: The Location of Culture. London / New York: Routledge.

Bornstein de Somoza, Miriam 1980: "Peregrinos de Aztlim, dialectica estructural e ideologica." In: Revista Chicano-Riquena 8.4, 69-78. Republished in: Cuadernos Americanos 39.4 (1980), 230-233 and in Vernon E. Lattin (ed.) 1986, Contempo­rary Chicano Fiction: A Critical Survey. Birmingham, New York: Bilingual Press/Editorial BilingUe, 2 15-225.

Bruce-Novoa, Juan 1976: "La voz del siJencio: Miguel Mendez." In: Dicilogos J 2 .3, 27-30.

Catford, John C. 1965: A Linguistic Theory of Translation. Oxford: Oxford UP.

Davila, Elisa 1997: "Rompiendo Fronteras: Los chicanos una minoria causa y por la causa" [sic]. In: Hispanorama 77, 12-18.

Debate = "Debate en Granada sobre la Iiteratura chicana." In: Dicilogo Iberoamericano 15 (mayo-junio 1998), 26.

WHEN MUSICIANS PLAY SWALLOWS lSI

Flores, Arturo C. 1996: "La memoria como proceso constructivo en EI sueFio de Santa Maria de las Piedras de Miguel Mendez." In: Cuadernos Americanos 55.1 (nueva epoca), 131-140.

Gaardner, A. Bruce 1977: "Am'tlisis critico de Peregrinos de Aztlan." In: Bilingual Schooling and the Survival of Spanish in the United States. Rowley: Newbury House, 191-224.

Garcia-Barrio, Luis M. 13 Oct. 1998: Online posting. 14 July 2002. <http://lists.albura. net/efe.es/apuntes-kpn/1998-10/0567.html>.

Gataullin, Ravil' G. 2000/2001: "Probleme der Ubersetzung stilistisch markierter und okkasioneller Wortbildungskonstruktionen." In: Germanistisches Jahrbuch der GUS'Das Wort', 49-69.

Gonzalez Gomez, Miguel 1997: Quoted in "Opiniones criticas sobre la novela 'EI suefio de Santa Maria de las Piedras"'. press release by Port Royal, Granada.

Gutierrez Revuelta, Pedro 1981: "Peregrinos y humillados en la epica de Mendez." In: La Palabra 3.1-2, 58-66.

Hundt, Christine/Perl, Matthias 1991: "Identidade linguistica como contribuiyao para a identidade cultural: reflex6es sobre a linguagem da literatura angolana." In: Lu­sorama 15, 45-53.

Johnson, Maria Mercedes 1978: A Thematic Study of Three Chicano Narratives: Estampas del Valle y otras obras, Bless Me, Ultima, and Peregrinos de Azttan. Madison: U of Wisconsin P.

--- 1982: EI tema del destierro en Peregrinos de Aztlan. St. Louis: St. Louis UP.

Joysmith, Claire 2000: "(RE)Writings in transit. Apuntes a colores." In: A QUIEN CORRESPONDA 101, 8-12.

Keller, Gary D.lMendez, Miguel M. (eds.) 1995: Miguel Mendez in Aztlan. Two Decades of Literary Production. Tempe, AZ: Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingile.

Koller, Werner 51997: Einfuhrung in die Ubersetzungswissenschaji. Wiesbaden: Quelle & Meyer.

Mendez, Miguel 1997 [1986]: EI sueFio de Santa Maria de las Piedras. Granada: Editorial Port Royal.

--- 1989: The Dream of Santa Maria de las Piedras. David William Foster (trans.), Tempe: Bilingual Press.

Meyer-Clason, Kurt 1986: '''Luanda'. Das Unilbersetzbare." In: Zeitschrift fur Kulturaustausch 36.4, 566-574.

Nord, Christiane 1995: Textanalyse und Ubersetzen. Heidelberg: Groos.

Pifia Ortiz, Martin 1994: La Frontera como ruptura. Sonora: Universidad de Sonora.

Promis, Jose 1988: "EI programa narrativo de Miguel Mendez." In: Revista chilena de literatura 31, 7-19.

152 CARSTEN SINNER

ReiB, Katharina 1971: Mdglichkeiten und Grenzen der Ubersetzungskritik: Kategorien und Kriterien fur eine sachgerechte Beurteilung von Ubersetzungen. Mi.inchen: Hueber.

Rodriguez del Pino, Salvador 1982: La novela chicana escrita en espanol: cinco autores comprometidos. Ypsilanti, MI: Bilingual Press.

Sainz, Gustavo 1997: Quoted in "Opiniones criticas sobre la novela 'EI suerro de Santa Maria de las Piedras'." press release by Port Royal, Granada.

Sinner, Carsten 2002: "Interkulturelle Aspekte der Ubersetzung: Mosambikanische Identitat in portugiesischsprachigen Texten." In: Lusorama 51/52, 38-57.

Takahashi, Mika 1997: "La reproduction sociolinguistique en traduction: Ie cas de Pygmalion en japonais." In: Source Plurilinguismes 13, 119-143.

Ulrich, Miorita [sic] 1989: "Taten ohne Tater. Zur unpersonlichen Konstruktion im Romanischen." In: Romanistisches lahrbuch 40, 26-43.

Vermeer, Hans 1. 1987: "Literarische Ubersetzung als Versuch interkultureller Kom­munikation." In: Alois Wierlacher (ed.), Perspektiven und Verfahren der inter­kulturellen Germanistik: Akten des 1. Kongresses der GIG. MUnchen: Iudicium, 541-549.

Vernay, Henri 1991: "Elemente einer Ubersetzungswissenschaft." In: Volker Kapp (ed.), Ubersetzer und Dolmetscher. TUbingen: UTB Francke, 26-37.

Villar Raso, Manuel 1997: "EI suefio de Santa Maria de las Piedras." In: Miguel Mendez: El sueno de Santa Maria de las Piedras. Granada: Port-Royal, 7-11.

Walter, Roland 1990: "Social and Magical Realism in Miguel Mendez' El sueno de Santa Maria de las Piedras." In: The Americas Review 18.1, 103-112.

--- 1993: Magical Realism in Contemporary Chicano Fiction: Ron Arias, The Road to Tamazunchale (1975), Orlando Romero, Nambe - Year One (1976), Miguel Me­ndez M, The Dream of Santa Maria de las Piedras (1989). Frankfurt/Main: Vervuert.

Watts, Keith E. 1996: "Simbolos Cosmol6gicos en el mundo narrativo de un sofiador comprometido: EI sueno de Santa Maria de las Piedras de Miguel Mendez M." In: Confluencia 11.2, 177-187.

Wendt, Gabriele 2002: "Bridging differences - Interkulturalitat als eine Herausforde­rung fUr die Obersetzer/innen." In: Bogdan Kovtyk, Gabriele Wendt (eds.), Aktu­elle Probleme der angewandten Ubersetzungswissenschaji: sprachliche und au­j3ersprachliche Faktoren der Fachubersetzung. Frankfurt/Main: Lang, 194-215.

Wotjak, Gerd 1993: "Interkulturelles Wissen und Sprachvergleich." In: Giovanni Ro­vere, Gerd Wotjak (eds.), Studien zum spanisch-deutschen Sprachvergleich. TUbingen: Niemeyer, 55-68.